Fake Hamsters

I vaguely remember hearing about the Zhu Zhu pet craze around Christmastime, although I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. I remember my sister mentioning that the little $9 fake hamsters were in such popular demand that some folks were paying upwards of $300 on ebay to have one in time for Christmas. That is insane! Thank goodness the craze has died down and they are now available all over the place. A few weeks ago a commercial came on for them and I heard my stepdaughter mention that she wanted one for her birthday.

Naturally when I saw an adorable pink and white one randomly one day I knew that's what I'd be getting her for her birthday! I also got her some of the accessories. I really didn't know much about Zhu Zhu pets prior to actually seeing one at CVS that day....they are little robot hamsters that are actually downright cute. They squeak and make adorable noises, and they move seemingly on their own. It's actually really interesting.

They also have their own little playthings, which are much like real hamsters have. I bought her the exercise wheel and couldn't wait to see what it did...would you believe those little suckers actually run on the wheel, just like real hamsters do?!? It's really pretty freakin' cute.

M loves her pink one, and with birthday gift certificates to Toys 'R Us she bought herself another brown one. I felt kinda sorry for poor L, so the day after her birthday I surprised him with one of his own, the black one. We set up their little activity village and those tiny things just went to town (the hamsters, I mean), playing, running on the wheel, sliding down the slide, squeaking and giggling and being all sorts of cute. We...umm I mean the kids, were enthralled.

I found myself doing a little bit of robot hamster surgery on the brown one...when he came to us he was squeaking and giggling but not doing much else. He wouldn't move the way he was supposed to. We tried changing the battery but that didn't work. We had just about given him up as defective when I had the brilliant idea to Google "my Zhu Zhu pet won't move"....lo and behold I found easy simple instructions for opening him up, twisting around one tiny miniscule little screw, and closing him back up. It worked! Success! Mr. Brown Zhu Zhu is up and running again and Wendy gets lots of props for fixing him, woohoo!

I loved having real hamsters myself growing up, they really are so cute! But alas we already have about 4 animals too many in our house now, and I'm not about to add another (until we can find an orange kitten with extra toes, that is, to replace beloved Ernie...but that's a whole other blog post!). For now we'll all be content with the cute little robotic fake hamsters.

Check out their play area! And this was before we added the accessories that my sister gave M for her birthday!